13 (1), 2012

TOJDE is appeared on your screen now as Volume 13 Number: 1 In this issue it is published 5 notes for Editor, 16articles, 2 books reviews a nd this time, 53 authors from
12 different countries are placed. These published articles are from Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Greece, Iran, Malaysia, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey, UAE and USA.

Educators know that students create better projects when they are personally invested in the material (Brookhart, Bronowicz 2003; McInerney 2008; Braxton 2008). The rewards are particularly significant when students can exercise some degree of creativity in the process of developing their projects (Su 2009). Possibly this is a result of engaging both hemispheres of the brain (Tatar 2009), or otherwise simply a reflection of the human preference to employ creativity in any endeavor, including “work” related ones.

The following note is that a review of existing literature pertaining to servant leadership and faculty development. Specifically, this work discussed delivering servant leadership to online faculty through the utilization of a faculty development program. The idea for this literature review stemmed from the author asking how an online academic administrator could utilize the practice of servant leadership in order to improve the overall online academic experience. The intent of the review involved discovering, through a review of the literature, a way of opening up a dialogue that can possibly drive future research studies regarding the practice of servant leadership to improve of the overall online academic teaching experience. In this work, the author conducted a literature review that identified strengths in both faculty development as well as practicing servant leadership within the online education modality.
The literature identified the issue of faculty isolation as challenge for academic administrators and offered up faculty development as a possible solution to overcoming it. The findings of the work showed a benefit to bringing servant leadership practices into faculty development programs in order to improve the overall online teaching environment. The work generates future empirical research ideas regarding building community, the use of servant leadership, and faculty development programs.

Distance education and its relationship to emerging computer technologies have together offered many promises to the field of education. In practice however, the combination often false short of what it attempts to accomplish some of the short comings are due to problems with the technology; others have more to do with administration, instructional methods, or students. This article provides decision maker with some trends that affect distance education and thus enable them to plan accordingly. The issues and problems are organized into categories as they pertain to students and enrollment, faculty members, academics, technology, the economy, and distance education. All such issues and problems were identified during an extensive review of current literature in the field.

Today many claim that e-learning can result in considerable time and cost-savings , such as traveling , work time and etc . This study was conducted to investigate these questions: should e-learning be used to reduce travel related stress? should e-learning be offered fully online to reach students living in remote areas? should e-learning be adopted to allow working students to study from home ? Pressure to use e-learning was developed as a factor to answer above questions. Data was collected through a survey of 400 post graduate students at Tehran University. The results showed that many Iranian post gratitude students agreed on above statements . In addition , linear regression analyses revealed a statistically –significant model for pressure to use e-learning as the best predictor of level of student’s intention to adopt e-learning (F 37.737 , df=1 , R square = .187 )

The study of student’s attitude towards e-learning can in many ways help managers better prepare in light of e-learning for the future. This article describes the process of the development of an instrument to measure university students’ attitude towards e-learning. The scale was administered to 200 University students from two countries (India and Iran) .The 83-item attitude towards e-learning scale was developed on six domains as Perceived usefulness ; Intention to adopt e-learning ; Ease of e-learning use; Technical and pedagogical support ; E-learning stressors ; Pressure to use e-learning .

The purpose of this study is to determine online self-regulated learning levels of students by adapting “Online Self-Regulated Learning Scale” designed by Barnard and his colleagues into Turkish. Present study, irrespective of being a scale analysis, is at the same time a qualitative research. It is executed via scan model. Study group of research consists of collectively 222 students.
Firstly the original scale has been translated by two educational technologists who are efficient in both Turkish and English languages. The validity of scale’s original factor structure within Turkish culture has been tested via confirmatory factor analysis. In order to measure the reliability of scale, internal consistency analyses have been conducted on data. In order to detect self-regulated learning levels of students; frequency, percentage, arithmetical means, standard deviation and t tests have been employed. In differentiation analyses p<0,05 significance level has been considered sufficient. As a result it can reasonably be argued that “Online Self-Regulated Learning Scale” is a valid and reliable scale that can be employed in detecting online self-regulated learning levels of university students in Turkey. Additionally below given results have been obtained regarding students’ online self-regulated learning levels: Students’ online self-regulated learning skills are generally higher and their highest level of skills is “structuring the environment”, whereas the lowest skill is “goal setting”. Online self-regulated learning levels of students from Social Sciences Teaching Department are meaningfully lower than the students’ online self-regulated learning levels from other departments.

As online degrees and programs increase in number and popularity so does the need for excellence and quality in the programs and courses offered. Becoming more scholarly in online course delivery, especially in the evaluation or assessment of those classes is essential for teaching and learning. This paper explores the pilot of an evaluation of student learning through anonymous feedback at mid-semester in seven online courses. Electronic Formative Assessment of Classroom Teaching (eFACT) is a process of gathering anonymous student feedback through a faculty consultant using e-mail. This process gives the online instructor the opportunity to make changes to the delivery of the course while the class is in session. Instructors felt they gained useful and meaningful information and were able to make changes in their delivery format midway through the semester. Student learning was helped through the use of online features that made the class more social and interactive. Perceived or real communication issues with the instructor and classmates hindered student learning. Although often citing the “nature” of online learning, the social aspect of learning seemed to be missing for many students. Assessments measures like eFACT can elicit detailed perceptions of student learning while the class is in session. It can affect the quality of the delivery method of the course by giving instructors immediate feedback as students reflect on their learning midway through the course.

Educational technology plays an important role in distance education system. By adapting new communication educational technologies in distance educational programmes their quality could be ensured. Instructions conducted through the use of technologies which significantly or completely eliminate the traditional face to face communication between teacher and students lead to distance education.
Now a days, media such as computer, artificial satellites, digital libraries, telephones, radio and television broadcasting and other technologies are presenting their potential for the purpose. Audio, video and print materials provide the base while internet is becoming cheap, fast and effective medium. Immense resources are already available on the web.
In addition, technology is rushing to bring in revolution in the filed of distance education. So in future, positive changes can be apprehended.

This study analyses the behavior and the preferences of the Greek learners of Turkish language, who use a particular e-learning website in parallel with their studies, namely: http://turkish.pgeorgalas.gr. The website offers free online material in Greek and English language for learning the Turkish language and grammar. The traffic of several modules of the website has been measured, examined and analyzed. The research was carried out between the years 2010- 2011 and included the analysis of several million clicks. The results show particular attitudes, habits and preferences throughout the e-learning process. There is a preference of users to exercises against theory. Fast cross-link exercises are preferred to slower “fill in” ones. During the weekends, visitors tend to use less e-learning facilities and select more light activities than the rest days of the week. Society trends and fashions like TV serials have a serious impact to the number of people who decide to learn a new foreign language, in particular Turkish. There is a strong preference of the audience to use online TV against online radio facilities for language practice. The subjects that Greek learners of Turkish language spend more time are verbs conjugation and vocabulary learning. They focus on elementary grammar subjects like the Alphabet, the numbers and the formation of plural. Finally, they try to learn the syntax of Turkish language through sentence structure puzzles and give priority to special grammar issues like noun compounds that are not present in Greek language.

This paper discusses the proposed model of the collaborative virtual learning system for the introductory computer programming course which uses one of the collaborative learning techniques known as the “Think-Pair-Share”. The main objective of this study is to design a model for an online learning system that facilitates the collaborative learning activities in a virtual environment such as online communications and pair or small group discussions. In order to model the virtual learning environment, the RUP methodology has been used where it involves the data collection phase and the analysis and design phase. Fifty respondents have been randomly selected to participate in the data collection phase to investigate the students’ interest and learning styles as well as their learning preferences. The results have shown the needs for the development of online small group discussions that can be used as an alternative learning style for programming courses. The proposed design of the virtual learning system named as the Online Collaborative Learning System or OCLS is being depicted using the object-oriented models which are the use-case model and class diagram in order to show the concise processes of virtual “Think-Pair-Share” collaborative activities. The “Think-Pair-Share” collaborative learning technique that is being used in this model has been chosen because of its simplicity and relatively low-risk. This paper also presents the proposed model of the system’s architecture that will become the guidelines for the physical development of OCLS using the web-based applications.

The aim of this study was to determine the distance education pre-service teachers’ opinions about the teaching practice course. The study was conducted with descriptive method. For data collection, analysis and interpretation, qualitative research method was used. Out of the students enrolled at Open Education Faculty, Department of Pre-school Education and Department of English Language Teaching, 27 students were volunteer to participate to the study. As a result of the study; it was found that some of the distance education pre-service teachers felt ready and enthusiastic about the teaching practice course albeit others did not feel ready enough.
In addition, the pre-service teachers mostly mentioned about their expectations for self-development and self-evaluation. The pre-service teachers considered that this course provided them the opportunities to know the students and learning environments, also to prepare the plans effectively, to learn about teaching-learning processes, to manage class and time, to benefit from coordinator teachers and to evaluate themselves. However, they also complained about lack of information about plans and teaching practice files, difficulties in class-management, problems in efficient time-management, indifference of the coordinator teachers, inadequate equipment at application schools; lack of supervision and limited opportunity to have experience.
Thus, they suggested that the coordinator teachers should be trained considering these problems also the application should be selected after physical check; besides the pre-service teachers should be supervised and provided accurate samples about plan and field preparation, thus frequent contact meetings should be arranged.

The technology has embraced the innovative learning methodologies. Distance Learning has taken the place of traditional face-to-face educational environment. The purpose of this study was to compare the level of student satisfaction of graduate distance learning educational psychology course to a traditional classroom educational psychology course taught by the same instructor. Population of the study consisted of Graduate students in course educational psychology during fall semester 2009. Study was descriptive in nature and findings were drawn after the descriptive analysis. Likert scale was used to determine the level of satisfaction between both groups. On the basis of findings, It was concluded that distance learning and traditional classroom students experienced a high level of satisfaction .It was determined that there was very slightly difference in the levels of student satisfaction in the distance learning and traditional classroom students.

Blended learning With the concerns and dissatisfaction with e-learning, educators are searching for alternative instructional delivery solutions to relieve the above problems. The blended e-learning system has been presented as a promising alternative learning approach. While blended learning has been recognized as having a number of advantages, insufficient learning satisfaction is still an obstacle to its successful adoption. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate students’ satisfaction with blended learning course delivery compared to a traditional face-to-face class format in a general multimedia course in physical education. Forty six (n=46) undergraduate students, between the ages of 20-22 years old, were randomly assigned into two teaching method groups: Classroom Lecture Instruction (CLI) and Blended Lecture Instruction (BLI). For the data collection at the end of this study, students completed an online satisfaction questionnaire.
Independent sample t-test analysis was conducted to measure students’ satisfaction towards the CLI and BLI methods. Results indicated that a blended course delivery is preferred over the traditional lecture format. These finding suggest that students' satisfaction could increase when the instructor provides learning environments not only in a traditional classroom, but in an asynchronous online system as well.

Higher education in Iran is confronting with several challenges; some of them are increasing demand for education and insufficiency of current programs to meet the growing needs, emerging information age and the necessity of achieving information literacy, and extending educational justice. It is assumes that a high performance e-learning system can overcome to the mentioned problems. It removes time and place restrictions and creates economical benefits, and makes available lifelong learning opportunity for all. The primary purpose of this study was to identify challenges of electronic learning development in Payame Noor University of Iran to present feasible solutions for establishing a suitable e-learning system. Descriptive survey design for data collection was adopted in this study. The population of this study was consisted of 600 instructors and faculty members.
A sample of 160 faculty member was selected by using random sampling method. Results show that barriers such as incompatibility of contents and methods, skill unavailability, attitudinal hampering, cultural barriers, infrastructural obstacles, encouraging and credit barriers as well as barriers related to incorporating e- learning into traditional education systems were the main challenges of e-learning in the Payame Noor University.
Also results revealed that factors such as educational effectiveness in e- learning, policy making, university's technical and social support of e- learning, financial support and expansion of income earning for instructors and faculty members, improving working conditions, foreign language skill and faculty members interest in professional development were the most important factors in developing e-learning in Payame Noor university of Iran.

Keywords: E-learning; Payamee Noor University; Development; Challenges and strategies for e-learning Development in the Payame Noor University of Iran

Distance education has emerged out of social compulsion, the dynamics of change and new cultures. It was the failure of traditional systems to be able to meet the demand in countries, where the resources available for tertiary education are limited, which basically gave birth to the new trend of education known as open and distance education. This new and innovative system of education has received a high level of acceptance in different countries as it offers flexible educational opportunities for continuing education to a large segment of their population. The increasing number of older adult learners with varying lifestyles in the population, increasing competitiveness of getting places in tertiary institutions, higher cost of education and a shortage of teachers are the main factors for increasing the popularity of distance education (Duncan, et al., 2003). Bangladesh has also taken the opportunity to provide a uniform and mass oriented universal system of education through open and distance education establishing Bangladesh Open University (BOU) in 1992.
Objectives of the Study: The main objectives of this study are-
Ø to assess the overall status of BOU in comparison with the open universities of two neighboring South Asian countries considering the following aspects:
· Administrative structural functions,
· Courses and instructional strategies,
· Learning opportunities, and
· Library, laboratory and counselling facilities
Ø to explore the potential of improvement for BOU to enable it to meet the challenges of the country’s educational needs in the next millennium.

Learners enjoy the convenience of being able to take online courses, yet many reports missing the face-to-face contact with their peers. This researcher has sought to tap into the vision of Ferratt & Hall (2009) whereby educators and technology designers are encouraged to extend the vision of online learning to “virtually being there and beyond.” Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine innovative synchronous technology and pedagogy as a means of promoting social presence in online learning. The inquiry was quantitative in nature. Through adapting Garrison and colleagues’ community of inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer 2000) it was noted that students perceived the use of synchronous Centra technology to be beneficial in promoting a sense of social presence in online learning.
Through one-on-one conversations within Centra, it was discovered that the use of this technology also had a positive effect on student retention. There was a correlation between learners’ perception that the instructor promoted an atmosphere of online community and there being a sense of social presence. There was evidence of satisfaction with instructor as evidenced by high student evaluation ratings. Instructor ratings were above the department mean and the university mean.

Keywords: Social presence, Centra, online learning, emerging technology, The Concept of Social Presence in Distance Education

The lab applications, which were started to be applied through mid 19th century, not only provide a new point of view but also bring about a new dimension to the lessons. At early times they were used to prove theoretical knowledge but lately they turned into environments where students freely discover knowledge as an individual or in groups. The activities that have come up with the recent form of labs substantially contributed to training ideal students for constructivist approach, who research, inquire, test, seek solutions, wear scientist shoes and deeply reason about the concept of concern. However, on the present stage of our educational system, these activities cannot be included in science lessons for several reasons. At that point virtual labs emerged as an alternative solution for the problems of the instruction in science courses. Thanks to virtual labs presenting different disciplines in a flexible manner, the interaction between the teacher and the learner become 7/24 independent from time and place. This article presents a study that provides insight in the appropriateness of Virtual and real laboratory applications on constructivist learning environment using interactive virtual chemistry laboratory (VCL) development was used in academic year of 2009-2010 for a six week period. The sample of this quasi-experimental study was 90 students from three different 9th grade classrooms of an Anatolian Secondary school in the center of Trabzon city. The student groups were randomly attained as one experimental and two control groups. The data collection tools of the study were; questionnaire of teaching philosophy (QTP), Semi-structured interviews and unstructured observations. The results showed that virtual chemistry laboratory software was just as effective as real chemistry laboratory and it positively affected the facilitating of constructivist learning environment. It was determined that the students in experimental group conducted the experiments as precise as the real ones; they felt themselves safe during the experiments; they could relate the experiments with daily life; they had the opportunity to investigate both macro-molecular and symbolical dimensions of the experiments. It was speculated that using virtual chemistry laboratories as a supportive complement in education will become an indispensable instructional material in terms of both the economy of the nation and the persistency of the learning.

The rapid growth of using Web 2.0 tools such as blogs has increased online courses in education. Questioners are the most commonly used instruments to assess students’ attitudes toward the online courses. This study provides a set of specific guidelines that the researchers used to develop a questionnaire to measure students’ attitudes toward the course blog. It focuses on test construction and instrument validation as two primary stages in developing the questionnaire and details a series of steps nested within two stages. Participants were 30 undergraduate students enrolled in a course blog. To analyze the data, qualitative findings of interview were complemented by statistical results from quantitative data. To improve content adequacy and internal validity of the instrument items, 25 students who took part in piloting the instrument were interviewed. We carried out Statistical analysis to evaluate inter-item correlations, and reliability alpha coefficient of the instrument items. The guidelines applied in this study can be used in other studies to develop a valid instrument to measure other constructs, particularly when a researcher does not have access to a large sample.

The population of students all over the world is growing without a proportionate increase in teaching/learning resources/infrastructure. There is also much quest for learning in an environment that provides equal opportunities to all learners. The need to provide an equal opportunity learning environment that will hitherto improve the system of education globally has therefore become imperative. Based on our findings, a mathematical model Web-based Virtual Classroom system (WebVCS) was developed to provide a viable medium through which sound education can be offered in tertiary institutions that can carter for varieties of learners irrespective of their abilities, dispositions and geographical locations. Our system model is developed based on active learning approach that adopts blended learning theory (Constructivist-Cognivist learning approach), incorporating e-pedagogy that supports collaboration among participants in the web-based Virtual learning environment. The key objects used in creating the WebVCS model are: Courses, Students, Instructors and Learning performances. Our system model sets a framework for developers of virtual classrooms and successful implementation of the model leads to students learning by interacting with their peers resulting in the construction of knowledge.

To improve the quality of learning, pedagogues have prescribed different pedagogical approaches (constructivist, cognitivist…). However, the effective implementation of the majority of these approaches has not been possible only after the advent of new forms of learning (E_learning, M-learning...). These forms are closely related to technological development. Later with the emergence of technology (pervasive computing, Artificial Intelligent ...) a new form of learning is established. It is called Pervasive Learning "P-Learning”. P-Learning is a social process that connects learners to communities of devices, people, and situations in a transparent and independent manner. This learning form goes far beyond the predictions suggested by pedagogue. Learning can then take part outside the learner via technology, which will be an extension of his brain by unloading the cognitive practices he performs.
The aim of this paper is to answer the following questions: What alliance is there between pedagogy and technology? Are we in need of a new pedagogical approach in the new learning environment "P-Learning"? What are the new pedagogical challenges to resolve?

Language education is important in the rapidly changing world. Every year much effort has spent on preparing teaching materials for language education. Since positive attitudes of learners towards a teaching material enhance the effectiveness of that material, it is important to determine the attitudes of learners towards the material used. Learning objects (LOs) are a new type of material on which many studies have been conducted in recent years. The aim of this study is to determine the attitudes of students towards LOs in web-based language learning. To this end, the study was conducted in English I Course at the Department of Computer Programming in Kırıkkale University in 2010-2011 Fall Semester. Seventy LOs appropriate for six-week long lecture program were integrated into the Learning Management System (LMS) of Kırıkkale University. The study group consisted of 38 students. After the six weeks long implementation period of the study, an attitude scale was administered to the students. The findings indicated that students in web based language education have positive attitudes towards LOs.

From past to the present, the learning need has increasingly grown. In this way, education and learning processes have also evolved; education has continuously changed shell along with social transformation and development. The communication and data transfer possibilities created by mobile technologies can significantly reduce dependence on fixed locations for work and study, and thus have the potential to revolutionize the way we work and learn (Peters, 2009). In this context, M-learning is considered as a new channel for the individuals who are mobile but aim to learn, and mobile learning design has became a new issue educators should be aware of. This is one of the basic books in the field of mobile learning design.

“Meta Communication” is the process between message designers when they are talking about the learning process, as distinguished from their articulation of the “substantive” learning, itself. Therefore, it is important to understand how to design reflective online conversations and how to implement a diverse milieu for prospective online learners so that they are able to transfer their information, knowledge, and learning from theoretical forms to real life experiences. This book discusses meta-communication for reflective online conversations to provide digital people with models for distance education. This book brings together meta-communication, distance education, and models as well as reflective online conversations at the same time.